Reality Check
by Agent Malkere
Summary: There is often a huge gap between what you know and what you think you know and it wasn't what Noa was expecting. oneshot.


_**Reality Check **_

_Agent Malkere _

**Disclaimer: I only borrow the characters – I do not own them – and I always give them back when I'm done. **

_A/N: Yes, yes, Noah has a body – please get over it._

It had been a normal evening in the Kaiba mansion thus far, or, at least, as normal an evening as you could get considering who you were dealing with here. Normal used to mean Mokuba in his room doing homework or playing video games by himself while Seto stayed up until ungodly hours of the morning working in his office. Now, however, that the household was made up of three instead of two the definition of 'normal' had had to be revised – after all, Noah had been added into the equation. A fact that Noah was still not too happy about. He liked having his own body, but he still wasn't convinced that Seto had the right to be in control of Kaiba Corp. It made for a rather large rift between the two, but that didn't stop Noah from complaining to the other boy when Mokuba did something annoying.

Seto stared blearily at his computer screen. He'd gotten about two hours of sleep last night (if even that much) and it was now nearly half past ten at night. He just couldn't deny it any longer – he needed sleep _now_. So much for getting those technical programs de-bugged on time, at the rate he was going he would only end up adding _more_ instead of actually fixing anything. With a groan the young CEO shutdown his laptop and then rubbing his eyes with one hand made his way slowly to his bed. Some small irrational and illogical part of the teenager's mind wondered if this was what zombies felt like, not that zombies actually existed of course…. Gods he was tired!

Back to his bedroom door Seto pulled his shirt off over his head in the process of getting ready for bed and ignored the sound of pounding feet in the hallway.

"Seto!" whined Noah, bursting through the burnet's door. Really, the green haired boy had no sense of privacy. "Seto, tell Mokuba to stop-" Noah's words died in his throat and a few in the process of coming out of his mouth so that they trailed off and dropped away.

"What is it, now?" Seto almost moaned, running a one hand through his hair and stifling a yawn. He really wasn't up to dealing with this tonight. Silence greeted his question. Rolling his eyes he turned to face his stepbrother. "Well?"

Noah's face had gone unusually pale and he was staring at the taller boy in horror. He raised one hand and pointed at Seto.

"Y-You're back… and your arms…."

"What about them?" Exhaustion caused the significance of Noah's fragmented thoughts to temporarily elude Seto. Dimly in the back of his mind something said that this should be setting off several dozen warning bells but the neurons which were in charge of the alarm system had already checked out for the night. Noah continued to stare at him mouth slightly agape. This was all starting to get very annoying to Seto, especially the staring part, but Noah had always been a persistent twerp.

"They're covered in scars," Noah whispered his voice so soft that Seto almost didn't hear him. The young CEO's eyes widened as he finally understood what the green haired boy was talking about. _Shit! _ Bad. Bad! This was very bad! Maybe he'd actually fallen asleep in his office – again – and this was all a dream – correction, a nightmare. Only problem with that theory was that all the sensations he was feeling were far too accurate and distinct for those of a dream.

Noah felt numb as his feet slowly began to carry him forward. No, this wasn't possible. During his time trapped in cyberspace he'd monitored all of the Kaiba mansion's security cameras (unbeknownst to his father, of course) so that he could keep an eye on his adoptive brothers, his 'competition.' Surely he would have noticed something like this happening. Surely… but vague memories were beginning to surface in his mind. Memories of his irate father dragging a young Seto into a room while Noah watched in frustrated curiosity but was unable to follow because there were no cameras in there and one time when little Mokuba had come out of his brother's bathroom screaming only to be joined moments later by the family doctor and his father, who turned off the camera in Seto's room and left it off for nearly two weeks. Could that have been how…?

Standing behind Seto, who had frozen completely at the mention of scars, Noah reached out and gently brushed the tip of one finger against the longest of the scars which stretched all the way from the top of his stepbrother's right shoulder to his left hip. Seto flinched at the feathery touch but other than that remained frozen. The scars wove together intricately like some sort of demonic lace some stretching up over Seto's shoulders and others twined over the back of his neck in their ascent. Each whispered darkly to Noah of unspeakable pain and suffering. He bit his lip.

"_He _did this to you, didn't he?" The whisper was barely audible but that was all it needed to be – you could have heard a pin drop in that room. Seto gave a barely perceptible nod before finally unfreezing.

"You'd better be getting to bed," he managed to say hoarsely. "Tell Mokuba he needs to be, too."

"Yeah… okay." None of the usual annoyance that came from being asked to do something was in the green haired boy's voice. Noah all but ran out of the room and away from the reality he had just discovered. Seto and Mokuba had been right all along – his father _had_ been a nightmare.

_A/N: What do y'all think? Thanks for reading!_


End file.
